Amanda Tapler

Amanda Tapler is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Public Health at Elon University. Her teaching, scholarship, and mentoring focus on global health, community-engaged learning, intercultural learning, and the development of ethical and mutually beneficial global partnerships. .

Tapler also serves as Director of Elon’s Global Partnership Scholars (GPS) program, previously known as the Periclean Scholars program. GPS is a three-year, cohort-based academic program centered on sustained, ethical, and mutually beneficial partnerships with communities locally and globally. In this role, she works with faculty mentors, students, and community partners to advance engaged learning grounded in collaboration, reciprocity, student leadership, and long-term partnership.

Tapler has extensive experience developing and leading community-based global learning opportunities and has maintained a longstanding partnership with the Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP) in Jamkhed, India. Her scholarship draws from these experiences and explores questions of power, equity, reciprocity, and assessment in international and community-engaged education, with particular attention to how universities can better understand and strengthen the experiences and outcomes of both students and community partners. Her collaborative scholarship has contributed to the development of tools and frameworks designed to strengthen ethical and equitable approaches to global learning and community engagement.

A central component of Tapler’s work is mentoring undergraduate students in research and engaged scholarship. She has mentored students through the Lumen Prize, Honors, Multifaith Scholars, and other undergraduate research experiences, supporting students as they develop and present research in public health, global health, and community-engaged learning.

Across her teaching, scholarship, and mentoring, Tapler seeks to connect classroom learning with communities and real-world public health challenges while encouraging students to critically examine issues of culture, power, equity, and responsibility in local and global contexts.